A Lily Among Thorns(44)
“I said I didn’t want to discuss it.”
“I know. I just wish I could have been there.”
Solomon looked at his hands. “So do I.”
“Have some gingerbread. It’s good.”
He raised an eyebrow at her, but he reached for the gingerbread. She took the opportunity to brush their fingers together.
“Elijah would have liked you,” he said. “I wish you could have met him.”
She chewed her lip. “Are you sure he wouldn’t have thought I was toying with your affections?”
“I’m sure you would have gone to a great deal of trouble to make him think so.” He grinned at her. “You really oughtn’t to think you’re a heartless bitch just because people tell you so. ‘Forsake the foolish, and live,’ remember?”
“Because you haven’t been affected at all by your family’s expectations that you’re a dull-as-ditchwater milquetoast Quakerish idiot.”
“I am a dull-as-ditchwater milquetoast Quakerish idiot,” he said without heat. “Pass the orange.”
“Precisely, and I’m a heartless bitch.”
He stared at her with something approaching amazement. “Huh. You’re right.”
“I generally am.”
He frowned. “So—does that mean I’m not a Quakerish idiot?”
She laughed weakly and threw the orange at him. “Well, you may be an idiot.”
He pulled a knife from his pocket and sliced it into eighths. Juice ran over his fingers and he sucked it off, looking irked. Somehow that little frown made it even more seductive. “I was unforgivably foolish this morning. Miss Jeeves would bore me to tears, I know that. But—but she looked like you, except—”
“Except what?”
He hesitated. “Except she looked at me as if she—as if she didn’t mind liking me.”
Poor Solomon. He didn’t even ask her to be pleasant. He just wanted her to be willing to like him, and show it. He had such low expectations, and she still couldn’t meet them. What made it worse was that she liked him so damn much. But she couldn’t show it like other women did. She couldn’t be like other women. She didn’t want to be. It was too frightening; it would make her too vulnerable. She sucked on a piece of orange and tried to think what to say.
He saved her the trouble. He probably thought she wouldn’t have said anything anyway. “Isn’t there anyone in your family you don’t hate?” he asked.
“My mother, I suppose. I haven’t seen her in six years.”
Solomon’s eyes widened. “Your mother is still alive? Where is she?”
“At Ravenscroft, I suppose.” His jaw tightened. She said with as much conviction as she could, “It’s not her fault. She can’t control him, and she’s not well, and she always tried to protect me.” More or less. She could guess what he thought of her mother, anyway, and she didn’t really want to hear it. To avoid looking at him, she untwisted the sheet of newspaper that had held their oysters and flattened it out.
DUCHESS OF RICHMOND PLANS BRUSSELS BALL FOR THE
17TH OF JUNE
LONDON, JUNE 11—FOREIGN OFFICE’S LORD VARNEY
ASKS PARLIAMENT FOR AN ADDITIONAL £20,000 TO
FIGHT FRENCH SPIES
Even here, she couldn’t escape René for a moment.
“We’ll get him,” Solomon said, reading her thoughts as easily as if they were printed headlines. The coldness in his voice surprised her. But then, his brother had been killed by the French. He looked at René and he saw what he ought to see: the enemy. No matter how hard she tried, she could only see her friend. It didn’t matter. She’d get him just the same.
“What I really miss is the sea,” she said.
“I’ve never seen the sea.”
Serena wished she could show it to him. “It’s beautiful. Sometimes I miss it so badly I can almost smell it—except I can’t.” That tantalizing salty smell was forever out of her reach. All she had in London was soot and fog and almond soap. “Sometimes I go into the cellar and open the barrels of pickled cucumber, just to smell the brine.”
Solomon’s brow wrinkled. “The sea doesn’t really smell like a gherkin barrel, does it?”
She laughed. “No.” It struck her then, like a hammer blow, that she might never again after this week go down alone into the cool cellars of the Arms and open the gherkin barrels, or inventory the round smooth wheels of cheese, or inspect the long rows of wine. “Maybe I’ll go to Brighton when I leave.”